Home Crowd Wowed By Tattoo Preview

The opening preview for this year's Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has "gone down a storm and wowed audiences'', organisers said.

More than 1,000 performers, 35 Zulu warriors, 40 fiddlers and 45 steel drummers entertained the preview crowd at this year's Homecoming-themed 65th tattoo on the floodlit esplanade of Edinburgh Castle.

Some 220,000 visitors are expected to attend the multi-national extravaganza.

The 2014 theme of Our Home, Friends and Family is designed to convey the notion of individual and collective journeys away from home to absorb experience and then return, organisers said.

Tattoo chief executive and producer Brigadier David Allfrey said: "I am fortunate to have the opportunity to travel to the ends of our inhabited earth to meet our friends and allies and am always struck by the impact that Scotland has made and the warmth with which visitors are greeted. And nowhere is this more evident than across the countries of the Commonwealth.''

The tattoo opened with a specially-commissioned fanfare, created to celebrate the Year of Homecoming, entitled Ready To Go, composed by Michael McDermott.

The audience was the taken on "a journey around the world'' encompassing a number of Commonwealth nations.